


Glam Cristal

by nigellecter



Category: Blood and Chocolate (2007), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Established Relationship, M/M, Public Display of Affection, Rough Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 14:51:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7272580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigellecter/pseuds/nigellecter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on wolfpainter's headcanon. I am expanding it into a multi-chapter headcanon fic. </p><p>“A whole fucking pandemonium. With the rival faction and politie duking the fuck out. Those motherfuckers tipped us off.”</p><p>Nigel’s intense hazel immediately brims with vengeful fury, as he hands Aiden his backup glock. His own gun, the gold-capped grip gleams under the soft luminescence of the overhead light, myriads of blood stains and his pressed fingerprints etched upon the surface like etched copperplate. Decades of his criminal activities stacked upon single weapon like the atrocious trophy. After all, he was notorious of being ruthless, merciless and fearless even within the flurry of bullets, tearing everything apart, even the very air he breathes as they whoosh past.</p><p>The air thickens with the prospect of spilled blood and mingling ectoplasm of Nigel’s cigarette and Darko’s cigar, the fumes, along with the intense scent of turpentine cutting through the stale air. “You fucking know what to do, Aiden. Remember what I have fucking taught you. Load the bullets, cock the damn hammer.” Chucking on the shirt and his nimble feet strides around the vast room, searching for his knife.</p><p>Unbata'ed, mistakes are my own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On the twelfth floor of the grandiose establishment soaring through the Bucharest night sky, the stampeding steps of the hustle and bustle downstairs and booming throbbing walls vibrating with exuberant energy and unchecked energy of the clubgoers aren’t simply formidable enough to reach beyond the comfort of the suite which Nigel and Aiden reside in. 

 

It was one of those extravagant suite equipped with porcelain tubs, walk-in closet full of luxury, form-fitting Versaces and Georgio Armanis, copious amount of vintage bourbon and whiskey and sheets even more luscious and seamless than the coalescing horizon merging with mauve of twilight and crawling penumbra upon the skyline. It was one of those jam-packed night full of social fledglings and youngsters seeking for redemptive qualities upon copious amounts of drugs, cheap booze, flowing cocktails and riffs and percussions of guitars and drums to carry them all the way until the daybreak. The night was theirs, it was their time to ephemerally shine. 

 

While they retreated behind soundproofed, luxurious room, where the real center stage had been. Nigel’s premium pair jeans cling snug around his narrow hipbones, the waistband of his briefs visible through the sharp ridge of his muscle packed underneath. A manifestation of strength and muscle contained within the stretched limbs as he maintains the stagnancy, as he perches atop of the form-fitting mattress in a casual spread. 

 

Aiden is buried behind the appurtenances of his craft; a well-stretched and primed canvas, alongside the array of vivid pigments mixed with Nigel’s strong set of hands, some coarse, most often refined pigments shipped from all over Europe. Impressive spread of different shades, ranging from alizarin crimson to light cadmium orange and red blends expertly with a flick of Aiden’s wrist, the bristle makes a single, decisive stroke around the curve of Nigel’s neck where the pin-up girl tattoo resides along with the intricate web of cords and vessels. 

 

It seems like an usual night full of angelic serenity as the moonbeam casts upon the vast window and spreads upon the luscious sheets to add on embellished, yet easy passing of the night when everything becomes a vivid swirl of colors and enraptured bliss. With a small flask close to the sharp turn of his abdomen muscles and a lit cigarette puffed through the uplift slash of his lips, Nigel’s eyes flutter close. Too heavenly, as paradigm shifts and the world shuts behind the curtain. 

 

Except the steady palpitation of his heart and rhythmic strokes of Aiden’s brushes, along with the cerulean blue of the artist’s eyes, enraptured and transfixed upon his muse. 

 

The heavenly bliss, their welcoming respite, the shared moment between the model and the artist, drawing inspiration from each other abruptly halts when Darko storms inside like an tumultuous storm cloud. His facade mimics that of the thunderous fury as he throws a revolver against the mattress, just few inches away from the curve of Nigel’s bent arm, propping his head up. 

 

_ “Mișcă-ți fundul în sus al naibii . Acolo e întreg la parter în zarvă subsol.”  _

 

Darko’s crude words immediately instills some reality into Nigel’s brain as he shoots glowering daggers full of venom to his associate. A fucking commotion in the basement? Even when flinging profanities weren’t such a peculiar endeavor between these dynamic duo, Nigel still had been pissed off by sudden interruption upon his blissful relaxation. 

 

_ “Să fie mai specific al naibii, prostule.”  _

 

The bridge of his nose tightly pinched together, Nigel snarls like a beast ready to pounce its prey with even a single peep, he quickly plucks himself off from the mold of his figure and dons the black silk. Aiden swiftly wipes the brush clean with the turpentine, before wiping the excess off on the rag hanging by the portable easel. 

 

“A whole fucking pandemonium. With the rival faction and  _ politie  _ duking the fuck out. Those motherfuckers tipped us off.” 

 

Nigel’s intense hazel immediately brims with vengeful fury, as he hands Aiden his backup glock. His own gun, the gold-capped grip gleams under the soft luminescence of the overhead light, myriads of blood stains and his pressed fingerprints etched upon the surface like etched copperplate. Decades of his criminal activities stacked upon single weapon like the atrocious trophy. After all, he was notorious of being ruthless, merciless and fearless even within the flurry of bullets, tearing everything apart, even the very air he breathes as they whoosh past. 

 

The air thickens with the prospect of spilled blood and mingling ectoplasm of Nigel’s cigarette and Darko’s cigar, the fumes, along with the intense scent of turpentine cutting through the stale air. “You fucking know what to do, Aiden. Remember what I have fucking taught you. Load the bullets, cock the damn hammer.” Chucking on the shirt and his nimble feet strides around the vast room, searching for his knife. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Aiden remembers all the steps correctly, as he had been a visual learner his whole life, the process comes easy as a well-presented slideshow. His fingers are dexterous, he had seen his father frequently use the similar looking gun countless times before and even had taken a beating with it. Obviously, there had been his own goddamn blood marring the crude curves and intricate sleekness of the surface. He rather despised the firearm, but there had been no choice.

 

Even when Aiden trusted Nigel’s capabilities of disposing the assailants even when they seem to be outnumbered. The CCTV screen confirms the ever growing commotion from the ground floors - almost every clubgoer evacuated, the other notorious faction doesn’t remorse in killing the innocents and bystanders as millions of broken shards, splays of arterial blood arch to taint the recently renovated wallpaper and glasses fly over all directions, sparkling dusts rise through the stampede of the crowds as it leaves a obscuring trail behind it. The music in the background a bodement to the unfolding events. 

 

“I remember it well enough, Nigel. We practiced it millions of times on the rooftop.” 

 

A slash of a smirk briefly flashes over Nigel’s lower face as his impatient click of the oxford grows even more restless. The continuous stream of puff slips through his parted lips, his half-lidded gaze looking through the dense air. “Where the fuck is my goddamn knife?” 

 

Rummaging through Nigel’s haphazardly strewn pieces of clothing, Aiden grabs hold of a smooth-handled pocket knife, the black gleaming like a well-cut diamond beneath his grip. Like a discharged electric current finding nowhere else to cling to, Nigel begins to devise a plan - through the scrutinization of the footage recording this very moment, most cops, very minute in number had either gone off to get more reinforcements or have already been disposed of. Since he didn’t know how many were there originally, it was a wild guess. 

 

Darko suspects it’s the latter, as the law enforcement had been as corrupted as the politicians in the country. Blackmail and let their Glam Cristal prosper in peace. 

 

Immediately taking his knife and shoving it inside easily reachable pockets, Nigel discards the empty cartridge from one of his backup glocks and hands Darko and Aiden each a spare from the drawer, already fully loaded and ready to go. They fire faster than the revolver, albeit less powerful. 

 

“No fucking time to waste, we hit them from the door behind them. Obviously they’re only here to cause more fatalities than anything else, solely to taint our reputation. Let’s give them fucking proper sendoff.” 

 

Darko leaves with a handful of entourages with his characteristically menacing, lopsided smirk and both men are briefly left by the narrow corridor by the staircase. The elevator had been already jammed up, as one of the associates inform him through the earset he wears. “You stick behind my side at all fucking times, got it? Don’t go wander away on your own.” 

 

With the tighter curl of his fingers around the smooth grip of the revolver, Nigel presses his body to entrap Aiden between the doorframe and him to surge into the other’s lips. His free hand, calloused and rough touch traverse along the curve of the other’s neck and jaw, to rake through the unruly, bouncing curls as he strikes as a cobra, constricting its prey. If it wasn’t for the pressing matter that deserves his utmost attention, he would’ve succumbed to the rush of flaring heat, blazing across the expanse of his already warm skin and through his spine beneath all the fabric adhering onto his skin. A drop of sweat caresses over the taut cord just above his pin-up girl tattoo. 

 

Reciprocating the kiss with equal intensity, the resounding ruckus down the staircase is the last thing to penetrate between the crevices of Aiden’s brain as the world shuts once more. The aura exuding out from the taller man is that of inextinguishable anger. As the vibe of his painting suggests, it becomes a profound roar. All strength and muscle compacted within the slender toned body of his. Crudely rapacious and devouring when it comes to bloodlust and the sheer adrenaline of it. 

 

Aiden remembers the lingering warmth against Nigel’s naked skin, as his own hand had drenched in the misty steam, washing over the grime and dried-up flecks of sanguine, still heavy with the prospect of strained breaths, as the unknown victim would have watched Nigel’s towering form with each muddled blink. The iron-rich fluid invades his tastebuds as Nigel’s teeth sinks into his lower lip, the amalgamation of saliva clings onto the red-tinged lips as they part. Aiden entwines the taller man’s hand and gives a tight squeeze, before whiffing Nigel’s scent in. He still visualizes the calm tranquility of the room, filled with stale smoke, sweet vanilla, honeyed hint of whiskey he still tasted upon Nigel’s lips and almost leathery, surprisingly crisp and addicting personal cologne of the other man’s skin. The fume of the turpentine - he already grew accustomed to it to disregard the assaulting scent. 

 

As long as he could make the scent from the threshold of the vast stretched rooms strewn with now wrecked pieces of tables and bottles, Aiden would find solace in that. 

 

The intelligible grunts and tangled limbs greet them once as Nigel storms off, skipping over the stair railing to lunge himself down against a couple of people locked in exchanges of snarling lips and malicious dribble of fluids. Two successive gunshots as his hips pivot with the velocity of his dashing motion, he quickly rolls his body away from the gruesome sight of the two - exposed viscera, gurgling blood and an explosive force that sends deluge of warmth down Aiden’s path. 

 

_ No mercy, no regret, only violence.  _

 

Aiden is used to Nigel’s other side, that side he had seen through his own paintings and those nights when he would feel the taller man’s feverous aura cocoon him in every direction without their skin ever touching. But then, Nigel’s skin metamorphosed to the luscious fur of the wolf, the vigor etched through the every string of muscles and protruded veins. The rich viscosity of the oil paint, the image pressed upon the fibers of canvas transpire into the beastly, beautiful creature, now swiftly moving like predacious untamed monstrosity. 

 

Sketching the memory of this scene, as Nigel’s half-drenched face shoots back towards Aiden’s direction as the taller man’s impassive face fixates in the place like a poster out of an apocalyptic world. It’s bone-chilling and thrilling as well. With goosebumps spreading through his arms, Aiden follows suit as Nigel kicks the heap of limbs away from his path, taking a breather before hiding himself beneath the shadow.   


	3. Chapter 3

The unperturbed pond, now tremulously moving about with endless ripples as Nigel gazes into what seems like an abyss of shadowy darkness along with erratically strewn bodies, streaks of blood marring every fiber of the wall and carpet. Where exhilarating force of the carefree night, which had long became something of a contagious disease exists. The stomping of rowdy crowds and all the illuminations; unnatural, intense technicolor slanting and seeping onto the cement as the night continued to carry away. The sea of faces enraptured and transfigured to become the unrestrained versions of themselves under the non-judging conformity and bacchanal revelment. 

 

Now only the phantasm of the lingering scent of alcohol and all the glittery substance leaves an ugly streak of faded and muddied colors, coarse and cottony against his throat as Nigel inhales deeply. The widening puddle of blood takes over the debauched night full of casual sex, drugs and blaring cacophony of music, strings of crude, blunt profanities.

 

Darko appears from the opposite side of the section full of small rooms where it should be thriving with endless exchanges of sweet cocktails and tasteless and vulgar fornication. All the clients had swiftly exited to the back door, as extravagant, luxurious suit jackets and accessories still occupy some of the coat hangers and couches along with the bitterness of the angel dust.

 

“They already ransacked this fucking floor, some girls were killed and most taken.” Wiping away a bit of blood dribbling onto the floor from the collar of his button-down shirt, Darko lights up another cigar and takes a heavy puff. After muttering an exasperated Romanian into his earpiece, Darko hands Nigel a copper-colored key and winds an arm around Nigel’s shoulder. Standing opposite Aiden, Darko’s gaze is fixated on the younger man, who doesn’t divert his gaze and cautiously looks around for a cover.

 

Aiden’s gaze passes through Darko’s shoulder and sees a heap of men, already expired and streams of blood pooled around their motionless bodies like dribbling faucet. The look of their orbs gaze into an unfathomable abyss and Aiden feels a chill rush through every inch of his skin as his blood turns into ice. He had to admit, there was an incomparable and perplexing titilation - like a flint sparking to generate fiery bundle of energy. Refusing to be contained as the frosting sensation becomes an ear-splitting uproar of a hailstorm.

 

The thought is ironic, as Aiden had felt remarkably proud, as if one of his own painting had come to life on its own - his almost life-size painting of Nigel, situated against the bigger easel in their flat by the black leather couch. With Nigel leaning back against the windowsill and perched atop with a sheet contouring along the well-developed thigh muscles, only bare hint of his groin shown as the moonlight streams from the half-shut window. The wind scatters Nigel’s long locks like a male lion’s mane. Nigel’s not ripped in any way, but he has a swimmer and a dancer’s build. With heavier and broader top with slender legs. With a fur-coat barely covering the expanse of his broad back, Nigel’s profile sticks out in high-contrast in expressive colors, rendered in choppy, short strokes and careful precision. There’s a grandiosity and elegance behind the crude sangfroid facial expression, almost broody under the contrast of cool spread of beam and Nigel’s exuberance of heat - unquenchable and obstinate.

 

Balancing his weight against the balls of his feet to subdue the clicking sound of his oxfords, Nigel’s jaw tilts to the side as he gives Darko an appreciative nod. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

 

As soon as Darko disappears from his sight, Nigel’s fingers latch onto Aiden’s wrist like a set of talons as he presses his body close against the curly-haired man. “Listen, we’re gonna make it through that fucking metal door, that’s where all the weapons are stored. Darko’s already there along with his men. Before the motherfuckers turn this fucking place upside down, we’re gonna hit them first.”

 

Before parting his fingers from Aiden’s, Nigel doesn’t skip to scrutinize every nooks and crannies of the suite rooms. Nothing turns up. Only empty rooms enveloped in charcoal darkness as the grim silence settles like a heavy fog.   

 

Wiping the dripping warmth from his cheek, Nigel carelessly wipes it against the back of his jeans and keeps Aiden close. He’s the embodiment of the mother hen too weary of her chicks from straying off to remote place where there would be looming predators at large. He’s at least completely devoted to do anything on earth to protect anyone who holds dear to his heart. There would be nothing - to stop him from causing a destruction -  _ upon others or self  _ \- to protect Aiden’s well-being.

 

As they close towards the weapon room, the distant flurry of bullets and cacophonous noise becomes more amplified. The half-floor separating the lobby and private suites is the source of the wreckage. As soon as Nigel rounds a corner, he is greeted upon a few comrades, turned hostage under a handful of assailants - which includes Darko himself.

 

Too petrified and in an abrupt disquietude, neither men make a movement before Nigel’s muzzle strikes dead square against one of the men’s cheek. The hell breaks loose as Darko and men pick up their confiscated firearm and return assault. After a series of too fast, too furious exchanges of jabs and hooks, pivoting hips and vengeful kicks, More drenching blood spews from the stomachs and heads as revolting scent of innards assault Nigel and Aiden’s nostrils.

 

A bullet or two had grazed just beneath Nigel’s preexisting wound to his side and one had lodged into his thigh. Aiden had kept away from the impact of the fight. Not that he didn’t want to engage, Nigel seemed to have served as a human shield, though he doesn’t need it. He’s well capable of protecting himself and how to handle various types of firearm himself - although he didn’t have Nigel’s years of expertise and precision of a sharpshooter, he’s been through thick and thin, have encountered a handful of sight similar, but subdued. He also bore scars from the past, that have shaped both his idiosyncrasies and place in the world.

 

He wasn’t just an artist who sought his perfect muse, the source of endless inspiration and the manifestation of his paintings, now metamorphosed into a creature within his paintings. Like Pygmalion with his Galatea.

 

Aiden isn’t unscathed either, but he looks significantly better than Nigel - a few scraped parts, his thin shirt had torn in a few places as jagged edges of cements, shards of glasses and gravels had scraped through the threads. His curls are damp with blood, and he’s sure through the deflated surge of adrenaline coursing through every inch of his body, he may have bumped with the assailants as they fell like sacks of potato.

 

“Well, that fucking escalated quickly. Tell me what the bloody fuck happened.” The weapon storage room’s door swings open by the flurry of gust whirling across the atmosphere as Nigel’s forehead pinches tight. A continuous trail of blood follows the outline of his skin-tight jeans and seeps through the heavy denim as he accesses the damage. He hops and pendulously swings his hips to regard Aiden, his rough, somewhat unrefined touch pushing away the other’s unkempt curls.

 

“They were watching everything from the fucking van outside, with the central CCTV system hacked. They’re occupying one of the ballrooms downstairs and holding our girls as fucking hostages.”

 

Glaring through the fallen victims with contempt dripping from his hazel, growing fiery by the minute, Nigel watches a lurid streak of wild, stone-colored fog seep through the vast window. The tumultuous thundercloud discharges the contained lightning as the etched lines, reflecting Nigel’s angry cords around the curve of his strong neck and the veined hands, filmy with blood and sweat.  

 

His muscles quiver with both prospect of anticipation as the throbbing adrenaline burst out like a torch swaying outward, threatening to be extinguished. His orbs darken further, reducing them into an intense pair of yellow dots as he hears Darko’s glock click.


	4. Chapter 4

Letting him to move in fluid motions as he carried himself through a series of pivots, tilts, using his body and its physical form like the most threatening weapon he could ever utilize, Nigel’s hardened body exemplifies all the gruesome spillages of blood and matters. The gnarled, jagged edges of his left side breathes a separate life as a lifelong side effect still haunts him because of his lack of care and reckless, devil-may-care attitude he bores at all times. No hospitals meant there would be increased chance of his affliction to be infected and his muscles still ached in paroxysm. The involuntary spasm would send an unpleasant, gyrating pins and needles as if the muscle strands were grabbed from ends to ends, squeezed and twisted in opposite directions.

 

Darko’s weary gaze pins down to Nigel’s limping leg as the bullet had definitely lodged deep into his left quadricep. The torn denim digs into the serrated edge of the entry wound and with every breath, Nigel feels an imperceptible, yet minute push of blood drops oozing through the jeans. He detects a copious amount of arterial blood splashed from one of the assailants, who he had knocked out earlier with the jaw-breaking punch. His own knuckles ache with the impact, yet the adrenaline seems to act as a shot of morphine. Perhaps more faster and potent than the painkiller itself.

 

Aiden’s own brimming anger bubbles through each strand of his curls, and the sight of Nigel’s gradually incapacitating form puts more than a dent along his own throbbing heart. “Why the fuck did you put yourself in front like a fucking shield? I’m more than capable of protecting my fucking ass.”

 

He could take a whiff and confirm that his own skin was marred with contusions, because the punches were thrown with malice and there had been raging savagery written all over them. They were not at all precise, but too much maleficence behind it to backfire; to inflict more pain than the receiver. Nigel’s own coppery skin seeps mauve underneath the thin white shirt and Aiden feels the steady rise of heatedness taking over the expanse of his skin as the shirt clings around the ring around his neck.

 

“But you’re fucking hurt, I can’t fucking accept that,” his lips are clamped shut, thinned as Nigel disapprovingly looks at the prominent scrape along Aiden’s jaw. No matter how much arrows he bore through the stretch of his spine, feeling every resistance and ripple among the expanse of his muscles, he would place greater care among those whom he holds dear to his heart. Aiden must have bumped his shoulder and side around the corner of the wall, leading into the room as the unexpectant sight had petrified and thrown him off.

 

Nigel’s calloused finger pushes Aiden’s locks, cupping the side of his head. Not overly affectionate, but it’s those radiating hazel that encompass more than the capacity of his vision. There is no holding back, no reservations when it comes to his unchecked exuding emotions.

 

This time, it’s Aiden who advances, grabs hold of the back of Nigel’s neck, as he gazes into the pool of diaphanous, unfathomable depth of the taller man’s eyes and molds his lips over Nigel’s. A long one that immediately pluck them out of this desolate abrupt mess and blurs the world to take them into one of those paintings. Full of enigmatic details, sparkling spread of celestial bodies overhead along with undisturbed tranquility spread out like being on a personal island. Nigel’s curled lips dip into his cheek as a guttural hum escapes through the sliver of the negative space. Their noses brush, hearts press as the aggravated exhilaration soon steadies down to rumbling palpitations. Hands capable to kill now takes on a function of something much more adept to make love, the soft press accelerates to more urgent and desperate waltz of tongues and nips, as coalescing saliva and each other’s blood mingles and rolls upon their tastebuds.

 

“Come.. I’ll give you a fucking proper banging right after I dispose of those motherfuckers.” It’s Nigel who parts first, as his already elevated heartbeat pushes right through the throat and threatens to spread the ribs open. Before parting, he gives Aiden’s long curls behind his neck a possessive tug and drags his teeth, leaving distinctive marks and licks over the scraped jaw like a big tiger would lap at the cub in affectionate manner.

 

It’s excruciatingly difficult to part himself from the powerful warmth transferred through Nigel’s front, but yet, the weight of the grip tightens around his curled fingers as Aiden’s cerulean pool meets Nigel’s contrasting well of embers in mid-air, before the thundering commotion resumes. Darko’s voice cuts through the brief moment of rejuvenating moment of fondness. He’s already breached through the back door and gotten a lucky break, although they have been outnumbered and few girls already had been fornicated.

 

Through ripped fabrics, more streams of blood and onslaught of cheap perfumes and long-lost grandiosity of the dance floor still looming with the bursting energy, Nigel’s own body seem to leave a heated spirit behind his tracks as Aiden follows suit. As cliche as it gets, he’d rather graze the meadow as the luscious fur of the coat perched on top of Nigel’s shoulder caresses and tingles the skin, as the intense moonbeam paints a slanting streak over their striding form. Just like the painting coming to life, the scent of blood bares the canines Aiden had implemented his wounded animal.

 

Nigel makes a beeline for the front door, the relentless shove immediately sends the steel door flying open as the two man guarding immediately bends over, which Nigel’s knee swiftly connects in a scissoring motion. Even when his torn muscle shrieks with defiant scream as his face contorts in pain, instead of seeing limbs and snarling gaze turning daggers across his form, Nigel moves more like an unstoppable train, ravaging through the series of broken remnants of glasses, more bullets grazing past him as his shirt rips, more blood gleams through the weaved fibers.

 

Lost in his translating movements, he fails to locate Aiden as he teeters to straighten himself back up. Aiden remembers firing a few shots and connecting few of them as he watched his own creation splatter over the well-worn couches and slanted glass tables. Through the heat of things, he fails to notice the coalescing heat rapidly spreading over his chest. First, he perceives as Nigel’s fiery fury rubbing off on him as he also wasn’t a fragile teacup. Locked in petrification, he notices a halo of crimson depleting all of his energy. Within a heartbeat and surge of spewing fluid, his body becomes a pendulum, collapsing backward as he sees galactic galaxy upon the ceiling. The soft radiating orange glow makes the bubbling blood even more so vivid in color.

 

“N-Nigel..” A burst of column spurts through Aiden’s throat, as his head strains to lift up to search for his lover. 


	5. Chapter 5

Aiden’s voice merely becomes a gurgling whisper as more dribbles of crimson hinders him from voicing out. The force of fishy taste of iron-rich fluid meets almost no resistance as his head lurches upward, fingertips clawing through the carpeted floor as the pristine white soaks rapidly. Nigel’s tightened expression shoots around, like a silverback desperately looking for a lost member of the group. Through the corner of his eyes, Nigel perceives a gash on the high arch of his cheekbone, the warmth spreads faster with the ebb and flow of the increasing palpitation. It must be the soaring adrenaline that exerts absolute control over as the bloodlust consumes his whole. None of his retained injuries will be fatal though.

 

Through frantically thrown limbs and spraying bullets firing from the opposite side, Nigel sees something akin to sparks from a grindstone - more webs of broken glasses, muffled grunts and groans as footsteps teeter and sway. The entire spectacle looks more like a scene from a blockbuster action movie, but it is painfully real. It’s his blood that he sheds, now Aiden’s blood is on his hands as Nigel scrambles to register the mortifying sight before him. At least it feels that way - it wasn’t his lover’s fight to begin with. It was _his_. 

 

Aiden’s gradually deflating heart tightly clenches as the cacophonous strings of shouts and flurries of more gunshots arch through the ballroom like fireworks. _Ear-splitting_ , yet the world seems to zone in and reduce within a few feet where their corporeality is occupying the space. With a sharp pivot of his hips, Nigel thinks of rushing to Aiden, except, his feet are frozen in space as if someone had restrained him with unbreakable links upon each his ankles. Too aghast with his pupils blown as wide as they go, the center of his gleaming orb fluctuates as his synapses seem to be malfunctioning with short-circuit. Better, his mind and body is completely frozen as if struck by Medusa’s gaze. The back of his eyes brim over with an unstoppable surge of salty tears. The faucet immediately corrodes and breaks open as the brewing emotion pushes over against the surface of his eyeballs, in a form of blinding waver of continuous ripples as a dense drop falls onto his cheekbone. Immediately and swiftly, it contours and draws a continuous line upon his quavering facial muscles and lips.

 

Tightly squeezing his lids shut as incomparable agony consumes his wrecked body, Aiden’s face remains rather beatific. The tiny twinkling center of his eyes swirl against the stream of light as the senses muddle. It’s all the _violence_ that he clams shut first. He had been too used to this from an early age and he doesn’t need another confinement to steer away from feeling Nigel in entirety.  

 

Although the life fluid instantly surges to deluge over the erratic shallow rhythm of his palpitations, fingers desperately search for any inch of skin he can come in contact with as Nigel collapses onto the earth without a care for the extension of his self, the revolver which has kept his company the longest. Plastered onto the ground with widening puddle beneath the arch of his spine, Aiden’s bouncy curls seem to lose its luster and his face quickly drains of vibrancy. That healthy glow he used to have when he had been enthralled with Nigel within the vicinity of his mental space as he zoned in within the other man’s dominant vibe. 

 

_Locked in the tranquility of their welcoming respite, generating a communication through hazel and cerulean, the comfort of white noise dawning upon them - the unperturbed sea merges to become one with the slanting sun as their entwining presence metamorphoses into the most spectacular spread of colors, seeping into the vastness of the sky._

 

His body unconsciously convulsing with each pump of the frantic pumping, Aiden barely has enough strength to lift his head, only to pinch the bridge of his nose tight as agonizing pain spreads quicker than the wildfire. His body feels too scalding and the limbs feel numb at the same time with rapid loss of blood. Every inch of skeleton shrieks in acute twist, neck arching, every vertebrae tighten like rusted coil. Eyelids growing heavy, but stubbornly gazing through the blurring milkiness of Nigel’s form, his fingers crawl like a sleepwalking man. Languorous, desperate, wretched, yet he knows it’s hopeless. He’s fading and burning out faster than the moth flying into the flame.

 

Nigel frantically moves about, trying to rip his shirt off from his frame in order to stop the increasing spurt of flowing crimson. No amount of words will help to express what his reeling mind has to process. Still in denial as he quickly wraps the crumpled fabric around Aiden’s form, the surge of blood splatters even further against Nigel’s bare chest as Aiden’s hacking becomes agonizing coughing. Lungs deflating, every erratic and diminishing exhale sends him closer to the unfathomable oblivion. The one he would never see the light of.

 

“Look at me, damn it! Fuck… Aiden. Don’t fucking fade away from me.” Nigel’s hazel orbs bears bursting embers as his fingers become talons, violently shaking Aiden’s shoulders as he feels the surge of invisible lump ejecting from his very bleeding heart. Like a fizzing soda bottle, Aiden’s mouth foams up with words he struggles to voice out. I-I’m dying, Nigel. There would be no turning back and I don’t even know whose fucking bullet decided to lodge into my chest. And no, it’s not one of those moment where with every passing second, your life rewinds and replays like a film reel. It’s the amalgamation, rather, the essential necessity which ingrains and etches through his brain as the visualization becomes clear as a daylight - short, intense, non-ephemeral relationship that kindled fire with shared commonalities.

 

Broad stretch of Nigel’s palm continues to pressure around the entry wound as the warmth continues to soak through the digits. Aiden’s tremor intensifies against Nigel’s pressed front, the coldness seeping onto every follicle among Aiden’s skin. The mist swirls thicker and thicker as the nonexistent light streams through and everything blurs into slashes of brushstrokes, dragged in slowed manner, albeit decisively. Enveloped in Nigel’s warmth as Aiden’s head tips against the taller man’s shoulders, Nigel’s back thuds against the wall, facing the opposite side where Darko and his entourages continue on their fight.

 

_Yes, their fucking fight._

 

Succumbing with surge of lassitude, Aiden’s body grows colder by every precious breaths exhaled, the trembling expanse of skin refuses to part from the ever-encompassing warmth of Nigel as a spillage of emotion continues to seep and coalesce through the fibers of their shirts. Nigel nuzzles his nose against the dark curls, winding arm tightening like a shackle, never wanting to let the other go.

 

Lips quiver as Aiden persists to mutter his last farewell. “Goodbye, Nigel... The moment we met, it was love..” _Since then, there was no escape, plucking himself from the unfathomable enthrallment._ Aiden’s heart pumps the last fluttering throb, a dribble contours through the press of their skin as the expanding pupil sets in stone. Hollowed gaze stopped dead as Nigel’s grim figure registers the last lick of life fleeting from the desperate clutch. An imperceptible hint of slant present upon the uplifted lips. 

 

Trembling with cornucopia of emotions, anger, rage, resentment, sorrow, desperation, animosity, Nigel’s teeth digs deep into his bottom lip before placing a solemn kiss upon Aiden’s pallid forehead. Turning away from the immobile body as his veins expand with bubbling heat, his fingers clutch around the glock and revolver as the laser shoots behind the maddened hazel. With the soul of Ares occupying his body, the limping limb is overpowered by overdose of adrenaline. With bodies falling like domino pieces, his sangfroid expression remains etched like a molded copper plate. _Welcome to limbo, I’ll be soon enough to hasten you there._

 

Through the gut-wrenching bloodbath separating the world outside with the threshold of the ballroom like Red Sea, Nigel’s slow stride returns his debacle of a body back to where it belongs - as he resumes his position by Aiden’s slouched form, the smeared blood of theirs mingled upon the invisible mold. Unlike the swooshing gunshots as his mind had simply blocked off all the needless external sensations, now a raucous sound tears through the luminescence of daybreak, as sliver of light invites him to cross to the other dimension. 

 

There, he sees Aiden, as if nothing had screwed over their lives, is taking his proportions, the gaze boring through the extension of his limbs, bends and infinitesimal movements. 

 

A distinctive shape draws over where Nigel’s head lays, slants down to rest against Aiden’s curls. With his slashed lips, slightly parted, quirks upward in a flickering gleam as the distant light beelines for their vacant gaze. Joined by red velvety caress, the free-flowing fluid overflows, as it takes on the owner’s traits. 

 

_The fucking love._


End file.
